BERKLEY, Mo. — Crews at Washington Park Cemetery in Berkeley, Mo., were expected to begin the exhumation Monday morning of the body of a young girl who was found murdered and decapitated 30 years ago.
In 1983, two men found the girl’s body while looking for pipe in the basement of an apartment building on Clemens in North St. Louis.
Police say the girl was African-American and was between 8 and 11 years old. The girl came to be known as “Little Jane Doe” or “Hope”. The murder has never been solved.The little girl had only with a dirty yellow shirt on. Her hands were tied behind her back with red and white nylon rope and her head was missing.
A headstone for the little girl sits in the cemetery, but that isn’t where her body is buried.
The cemetery has been issued with neglect.
There has been at least one other attempt to exhume the body in the past but the remains weren’t in the listed location.
Funeral director Calvin Whitaker says he along with city and county police and others, including a team from Washington University, have been researching the girl’s possible whereabouts since November and they think they know where she is likely buried.
Follow this story on fox2now.com in St. Louis. Berkeley, Mo. is about 15 miles northwest of St. Louis.
